We Chase Shadows is a globetrotting mystery that takes our unlikely trio from the hills of Tuscany to Palm Springs, via Barcelona, Stockholm, and the New Forest, and it delivers everything you’d want from a Richard Osman novel: wit, heart, and a plot that keeps you guessing until the very end. The first book in the series sold over 500,000 hardbacks and 1.3 million copies across all formats, becoming one of the bestselling books of 2024, and this sequel is set to be just as big.
Overview
The We Solve Murders agency finally gets a real case when a wealthy semi-criminal named Vern Blackwood hires them to investigate the murder of his bodyguard in Italy. A note left on the body points to Jakob Eriksson, a shadowy Swedish figure who’s been killing off Blackwood’s rivals for years. But as Amy, Steve, and Rosie dig deeper, they discover that nothing is what it seems, Eriksson might not even exist, and the real killer might be closer than they think.
Reader Recommendation: You’ll love this book if you enjoy clever, character-driven mysteries with a generous helping of humor and heart. If you’re a fan of Osman’s Thursday Murder Club series, you’ll feel right at home with the warmth and wit he brings to this new cast.
But if you’re looking for a gritty, hard-boiled thriller, this probably isn’t for you, the violence is mostly off-page, and the real pleasure here is spending time with these characters.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
We Chase Shadows: A We Solve Murders Mystery is the second instalment in Richard Osman’s bestselling mystery series. It’s scheduled for release on September 10, 2026 in the UK (Viking) and September 15, 2026 in the US (Pamela Dorman Books/Viking).
Richard Osman, of course, is the author behind the record-breaking Thursday Murder Club series, which has sold millions of copies worldwide. He’s also a television presenter and producer, best known for co-hosting the BBC quiz show Pointless. With We Solve Murders, Osman launched a new series featuring a fresh detective trio, and We Chase Shadows picks up right where the first book left off.
2. Background
We Solve Murders, the first book in this series, was published in September 2024 and became an instant hit. It introduced us to three unlikely partners: Amy Wheeler, a former close-protection officer who’s been accused of murder and cleared; Steve Wheeler, her retired police officer father-in-law; and Rosie D’Antonio, a bestselling crime novelist bankrolling the whole operation. The first book saw them clear Amy’s name and reluctantly decide to keep the agency running.
But here’s the thing, by the start of We Chase Shadows, the agency has been operating for six months and hasn’t solved a single murder. Steve is secretly relieved; he’d rather go back to chasing lost dogs and cheating husbands. Amy is bored out of her mind. And Rosie, well, Rosie is Rosie, she’s convinced something big is just around the corner.
In an interview, Osman described the sequel as featuring “lots of thrills, lots of laughs, and lots of murders”. He also mentioned that he wanted to write something “a bit more global, and more thriller-y” than the Thursday Murder Club books. And that’s exactly what We Chase Shadows delivers, a globe-trotting adventure that takes the trio from an Italian villa to a Swedish rooftop, from a Palm Springs country club to the New Forest.
Osman has also confirmed that a television series adaptation of the We Solve Murders books is being discussed with Netflix.
3. We Chase Shadows Plot Summary
Alright, let’s get into it. I’m going to lay out the entire plot here, so if you haven’t read the book yet and don’t want spoilers, stop reading now. But if you’re like me and you love knowing exactly how everything fits together, keep going.
Part One: Never Go to London
The book opens with a man named Connor Brooks, hiding out in Málaga, Spain, in 2001. He’s a small-time criminal selling dodgy vitamins by post. He’s convinced the police are closing in on him, he’s heard dogs, he’s seen people on the street talking, and he’s certain someone has “grassed” him up. He decides to fake his own death, leaving a suicide note and a pile of clothes on the beach. He’s got a new passport, a bag of cash, and a plan to disappear completely. He vows to find out who betrayed him and kill them.
Fast forward to the present day. We meet Steve Wheeler having lunch at The Brass Monkey, his local pub in the New Forest. He’s telling his friends about Rosie’s book launch in London. His mates are horrified, London is a terrifying place, apparently, full of expensive parking and late-night murders. Steve, a former Met police officer, isn’t impressed by their warnings.
We also learn that We Solve Murders has been open for six months and hasn’t solved a single murder. Steve is happy about this, he misses the old days of lost dogs and cheating husbands. Amy, on the other hand, is itching for action. She’s been escorting Rosie to book launches around the world, and while it’s been fun, she’s starting to think nobody actually needs them.
Part Two: Death in Tuscany
The case finally arrives. Vern Blackwood, a wealthy semi-criminal who sells fake vitamins, finds a dead body on his doorstep in Tuscany. It’s his bodyguard, Esteban, shot in the back of the head. In Esteban’s pocket is a note: “THIS IS A WANING. I WILL BE BACK AND YOU WILL BE NEXT. JAKOB ERIKSSON”.
Vern can’t go to the police because of his shady business dealings. Instead, he calls Rosie after seeing her on Graham Norton, where she’d promoted We Solve Murders. The trio jumps on a private jet to Italy.
At Vern’s villa, they meet the man himself, early fifties, charming, and full of excuses. He claims his fake vitamin business is only “a bit illegal”. He tells them that Jakob Eriksson is a rival in the fake medication business, but he insists Eriksson couldn’t have killed Esteban because they’re friends. He points them toward two other suspects: Tommy Griffin, an American rival who’s been expanding into Europe, and Georgie Glazier, his ex-wife.
Rosie, Steve, and Amy are suspicious. They dig deeper and learn that Eriksson is a known killer, Interpol has linked him to at least three murders. But something doesn’t add up.
Part Three: Summer in Palm Springs (and Stockholm)
The investigation splits the team. Amy stays at the villa to question the remaining bodyguards, Korben and Lee. Steve and Rosie fly to Barcelona to meet Ernesto, an Interpol contact. Ernesto is a delight, a tiny, mustachioed man in a battered SEAT Ibiza who once played for Barcelona and met Van Halen. He gives them information on all three suspects.
Meanwhile, Amy digs up Esteban’s body and examines the wound. She gets to know the bodyguards. Korben, the senior one, seems solid. Lee, the other survivor, is more laid-back. Korben tells Amy he has something to show her, something important, and asks her to meet him after lockdown.
But when Amy arrives at Korben’s cottage, she finds him dead, a knife in his chest. Classical music plays on repeat. She realizes Korben was working for Jakob Eriksson, and now he’s been silenced.
Steve and Rosie, meanwhile, visit Georgie Glazier in suburban Hertfordshire. She seems harmless, she volunteers at a food bank, paints plant pots, and drives a Skoda. But Rosie notices a tiny pause when she shows Georgie a photo of Eriksson. Georgie is lying about something.
They also visit Sara Lindstrat, Sweden’s most dangerous woman. She tells them Jakob Eriksson doesn’t exist, she knows every Swedish criminal, and she’s never heard of him. She suggests Eriksson is an alias.
Then Tommy Griffin, the American rival, is assassinated in Palm Springs. A sniper shoots him from the mountains. Carlos Moss, a US Customs officer helping the team, finds airport footage showing Jakob Eriksson arriving in Palm Springs the day before the murder. But Steve notices something off about the photo.
Part Four: Portsmouth Has a Thriving Tech Quarter
Back in England, things get personal. Tony Taylor, Steve’s best friend, is attacked in an alley in Lymington. A blond man with an eagle tattoo beats him unconscious and delivers a warning: “You tell Vern Blackwood, you don’t come looking for Jakob Eriksson”. Tony survives, but he’s shaken.
Felicity Woollaston, Tony’s girlfriend and the office manager at We Solve Murders, is furious. She starts her own investigation, tracking down CCTV footage of the attacker from a nearby doorbell camera.
Vern Blackwood, now staying at Rosie’s castle for protection, continues to insist Eriksson isn’t the killer. But Rosie has had enough. She confronts him, and he finally admits the truth: Jakob Eriksson is really Connor Brooks, the man who faked his own death in 2001. Vern helped him do it. They were friends.
But that’s not the whole truth.
Part Five: The Hunter’s Rest
The climax unfolds at The Hunter’s Rest, a hotel in the New Forest. The hitman with the blond hair, Mark Drury, is found dead in a ditch outside Rosie’s castle. He’s been shot multiple times. Then Vern Blackwood is found dead in Rosie’s wine cellar, a bullet through his heart.
Steve, Amy, and Rosie realize they’ve been chasing the wrong man. The real killer is Ernesto, their Interpol contact. He’d figured out the whole scheme, that Vern had been running both sides of the business for 25 years, using Eric Jacobs (a gardener) as a decoy to play the role of Jakob Eriksson. Ernesto killed Vern to take over the business, then killed Mark Drury to cover his tracks.
Steve figures it out when he notices that Ernesto’s version of the airport photo has a column covering up Mark Drury. Ernesto had doctored the image to hide his connection to the hitman.
In the final confrontation, Steve shoots Ernesto in the leg. Ernesto is arrested and taken back to Spain. Eric Jacobs, the real “Jakob Eriksson,” is revealed as nothing more than a retired gardener who was paid £15 an hour to travel the world and be photographed. He had no idea people were being killed.
The Ending
The book ends with a few loose threads tied up. Rosie survives being shot, accidentally, by Felicity, who’d bought a gun to confront the man who attacked Tony. Felicity becomes Rosie’s new manager. And And the Devil Blinked First rockets to number one on the back of the publicity.
Amy and Adam reunite for their anniversary, Adam shows up on a fake police motorbike, dressed as a copper, because their anniversary is “copper”. They’re finally going to Lanzarote.
Steve sits on his bench and talks to Debbie, his late wife. He can’t bring himself to move on.
And Georgie Glazier, Vern’s ex-wife, quietly takes over his business. She buys Eric Jacobs a retirement cottage. She’s the only one who knows the whole truth, and she’s not telling anyone.
4. We Chase Shadows Analysis
4.1 Characters
Steve Wheeler is the heart of the book. He’s a retired Met police officer, a widower, and a man who’s convinced he’s done with excitement. But he’s also fiercely loyal, to his daughter-in-law Amy, to his best friend Tony, and to the memory of his wife Debbie.
Osman handles Steve’s grief with real tenderness. There’s a scene where Steve sits on a bench dedicated to Debbie and talks to her, it’s quietly devastating. He admits to himself that “living is impossible, dying is frowned upon, and those are his only two options”. That’s heavy stuff for a book that’s also about fake vitamins and private jets. But it works because Osman never lets the humor undercut the emotion.
Amy Wheeler is Steve’s daughter-in-law and the muscle of the operation. She’s a former close-protection officer who’s been accused of murder and cleared. She’s tough, capable, and emotionally guarded, she has a resting heart rate of 32 beats per minute and has never quite gotten over being abandoned as a child. But she’s also deeply loyal to Steve and Rosie.
Her relationship with her husband Adam is complicated, they’re often apart, and Amy struggles to let herself be vulnerable. But when Adam shows up for their anniversary dressed as a copper, it’s genuinely moving.
Rosie D’Antonio is the wild card. She’s a bestselling crime novelist who’s bankrolling the agency, and she’s convinced she’s still young enough to be the center of attention. But We Chase Shadows forces her to confront her age. Her book sales are down. Her publisher drops her. She’s shot and nearly dies. And yet she never loses her spark. She’s still charming, still flirtatious, and still utterly convinced that she can talk her way out of anything.
There’s a brilliant moment where she’s lying in a hospital bed, having lost six pints of blood, and she’s still doing interviews and plugging her book. That’s Rosie in a nutshell.
Vern Blackwood is the client, and he’s a fascinating creation. He’s charming, wealthy, and utterly amoral, he sells fake vitamins and has been running a criminal empire for 25 years. But he’s also a coward. He created Jakob Eriksson as a “shadow” to do his dirty work.
He killed Connor Brooks in 2001 and stole his business. He’s been hiding behind a fiction for decades, and when the fiction starts to unravel, he panics. His death is almost inevitable, he’s been living on borrowed time.
Ernesto Manuelo Santiago de Sousa de Cuellar is the villain of the piece, and he’s a genuinely surprising one. He’s introduced as a lovable goof, a tiny, mustachioed Spanish cop who once played for Barcelona and met Van Halen. He’s charming, funny, and seemingly on the side of the angels. But he’s also deeply ambitious and resentful. He’s been passed over for promotions because of his background. He stole €300,000 from a drug bust.
And when he sees an opportunity to take over Vern’s business, he doesn’t hesitate. He’s a great villain because he’s so likable, you almost don’t want him to be caught.
Eric Jacobs is the book’s secret weapon. He’s the real “Jakob Eriksson”, a retired gardener who was paid £15 an hour to travel the world and be photographed. He had no idea people were being killed. He’s gentle, unassuming, and utterly bewildered by everything that’s happened. When Steve finally meets him, he realizes that “he doesn’t look like Death at all. He just looks like an old man”. It’s a brilliant subversion of expectations, the most feared man in Europe is just a pensioner who likes gardening.
4.2 We Chase Shadows Themes and Symbolism
The Nature of Identity. The central question of We Chase Shadows is “Who is Jakob Eriksson?” And the answer is: nobody. He’s a fiction, a shadow created by Vern Blackwood to hide his own crimes. The book explores how identity can be manufactured, how we can become whoever we need to be, and how the stories we tell about ourselves can become more real than the truth.
Connor Brooks becomes Jakob Eriksson becomes a ghost. Eric Jacobs becomes Jakob Eriksson becomes a gardener. Everyone in this book is wearing a mask of some kind.
The Cost of Ambition. Ernesto is the embodiment of this theme. He’s a brilliant man who’s been held back by snobbery and prejudice. He’s worked tirelessly to get where he is. But his ambition curdles into greed. He kills two men to take over a criminal empire. And in the end, he loses everything, his career, his freedom, and the respect of the people who trusted him.
Grief and Moving On. Steve is still grieving his wife Debbie, years after her death. He talks to her every day. He can’t imagine moving on. But the book gently suggests that maybe he should, that life is for the living. There’s a moment where Rosie puts her hand on his and says nothing. It’s a small gesture, but it says everything.
Age and Obsolescence. Rosie is terrified of getting old. Her book sales are down, her publisher drops her, and she’s shot and nearly dies. But she refuses to give up. She does interviews from her hospital bed. She turns her near-death experience into a marketing opportunity. The book suggests that age is just a number, but also that it’s okay to feel scared of it.
The Illusion of Control. Vern Blackwood thought he was in control. He created a fiction to hide his crimes, and for 25 years, it worked. But fiction has a way of taking on a life of its own. The note on Esteban’s body, written by Lee, the bodyguard, to cover up a murder by a spurned lover, sets off a chain of events that Vern can’t control. He ends up dead in a wine cellar. The book suggests that no matter how carefully we plan, we can’t control everything.
5. We Chase Shadows Evaluation
We Chase Shadows is a magnificent sequel that improves on its predecessor in almost every way. Osman has clearly found his footing with this new series, and the result is a book that’s funnier, more emotionally resonant, and more tightly plotted than We Solve Murders.
Strengths:
The plot. It’s genuinely clever. The twist, that Jakob Eriksson doesn’t exist, that he’s a fiction created by Vern, is set up beautifully and pays off satisfyingly. Every loose thread is tied up by the end.
The characters. Steve, Amy, and Rosie are a joy to spend time with. Their relationships feel real and warm. The book also gives us a genuinely surprising villain in Ernesto.
The humor. Osman’s wit is on full display. There are laugh-out-loud moments, like Tony Taylor not knowing where steak comes from, or Steve’s friends being terrified of London. But the humor never undercuts the tension or the emotion.
The emotional depth. Steve’s grief and Rosie’s fear of aging give the book real weight. It’s not just a mystery, it’s a book about love and loss and what it means to keep going.
Weaknesses:
The pacing. There’s a lot of globe-trotting, and sometimes it feels like the characters are just moving from one location to another without much happening in between. The middle section sags a little.
The violence. It’s mostly off-page, which is fine, but some readers might want a bit more grit.
Impact: This book resonated with me emotionally in ways I didn’t expect. Steve’s grief felt achingly real. Rosie’s fear of getting old hit close to home. And the ending, with Georgie quietly taking over Vern’s business and buying Eric a retirement cottage, was oddly satisfying.
Comparison with Similar Works: If you like Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books, you’ll love this. It has the same warmth and wit, but with a more global, thriller-ish feel. It also reminds me of Liane Moriarty’s books, there’s a similar blend of humor, mystery, and emotional depth.
Adaptation: Osman has confirmed that a television series adaptation of the We Solve Murders books is being discussed with Netflix. No release date has been announced yet.
6. Personal Insight: Five Lessons from We Chase Shadows
1. The stories we tell about ourselves can become more real than the truth. Vern Blackwood created Jakob Eriksson as a fiction, a shadow to hide behind. But the fiction took on a life of its own. People believed in Eriksson. They feared him. And eventually, the fiction destroyed Vern. It’s a reminder that the stories we tell ourselves matter, they shape how we see the world and how the world sees us.
2. Grief doesn’t have a timeline. Steve still talks to his wife Debbie years after her death. He can’t imagine moving on. And that’s okay. Grief is not something you “get over”, it’s something you learn to carry. The book doesn’t offer easy answers, and that’s what makes it so powerful.
3. Ambition can be a poison. Ernesto was a brilliant man who had been held back by prejudice. He deserved better. But his ambition curdled into greed, and he destroyed everything he’d built. The book is a cautionary tale about what happens when you let your desire for success override your morals.
4. Age is just a number, but it’s also terrifying. Rosie is terrified of getting old. Her book sales are down, her publisher drops her, and she’s shot and nearly dies. But she refuses to give up. She turns her near-death experience into a marketing opportunity. The book suggests that aging is scary, but it’s also an opportunity to reinvent yourself.
5. Sometimes the people you trust the most are the ones you should be most wary of. Ernesto seemed like the perfect ally, charming, helpful, and on their side. But he was the killer all along. It’s a reminder that trust is a precious thing, and it should never be given lightly.
7. We Chase Shadows Quotes
“Normal. Is there any sweeter word in the English language?” , Steve
“I’m not reading anything. I’m standing here talking to you.” , Amy
“We solve murders. Not We Complain About Furniture Designers.” , Rosie
“Living is impossible, dying is frowned upon, and those are my only two options.” , Steve
“I’ve created a shadow, and the great thing about shadows is that no one can ever catch them.” , Vern
“He doesn’t look like Death at all. He just looks like an old man.” , Steve, on Eric Jacobs
“No one ever died from having too much money, and millions die from not having enough.” , Rosie
8. Conclusion
We Chase Shadows is a triumph. It’s funnier than the first book, more emotionally resonant, and more tightly plotted. Osman has created a cast of characters you genuinely care about, and he puts them through the wringer in ways that feel earned. The mystery is clever, the twists are satisfying, and the ending, with Georgie quietly taking over Vern’s business and Eric getting his retirement cottage, is surprisingly touching.
If you’re a fan of Osman’s Thursday Murder Club books, you’ll love this. If you’re new to his work, this is a great place to start. Just be prepared to laugh, cry, and stay up way too late turning the pages.
Who will love this book? Fans of cozy mysteries with heart. Readers who enjoy character-driven stories with a generous helping of humor. Anyone who’s ever wondered what it would be like to solve murders with a crime novelist and a retired cop.
Who should skip it? If you’re looking for a gritty, hard-boiled thriller, this probably isn’t for you. The violence is mostly off-page, and the real pleasure here is spending time with these characters.
